The CRTC will be asked to rethink its 1999 Television Policy in a forthcoming report from parliament’s committee on Canadian Heritage.
‘There is a very strong belief, shared by the committee, that the CRTC has to look very carefully at the TV policy,’ says MP Wendy Lill, one of the 104 committee members. ‘There has to be a change… There has to be a spending requirement on Canadian content.’
The two-year study is expected to be released at the Banff Television Festival and will make ‘very strong recommendations’ about foreign ownership and the controversial CRTC regs, which many blame for the slump in Canadian drama.

Acrobats, sassy hoteliers, plastic surgeons and morticians jockeyed for position with Mafia bosses and killer puppets, as the first of Canada’s major broadcasters announced their fall programming lineups for the ’03/04 season.
In recent weeks, CTV, Alliance Atlantis Communications, CBC and CHUM all revealed their schedules and programming strategies for the coming year. Lineups for CanWest Global, Corus Entertainment and Craig Media were not available before press time.

Despite outpacing the overall growth of Canadian content produced in the last six years and reaching $420 million in production in 2001/02, the Canadian documentary industry is faced with filling more commissioned TV hours on lower budgets. This is the ultimate theme of a report obtained by Playback titled ‘Getting Real,’ to be released at the Banff Television Festival by the Documentary Organization of Canada.

To jumpstart its stalled application to change advertising policy at the CRTC, the Canadian Cable Television Association is sweetening its offer, which could generate up to $10 million per year for the beleaguered Canadian Television Fund.

The deal between Toronto’s Alliance Atlantis Communications and Hollywood-based video and film asset management service Point.360 for the purchase of AAC’s post-production houses Tattersall Casablanca, Salter Digital and Calibre Digital Pictures has been scuttled.

Alliance Atlantis Communications has reason to feel vindicated regarding its two-part miniseries production Hitler: The Rise of Evil, which drew strong ratings on U.S. television.

Vancouver-based digital animation company Mercury Filmworks is expanding with a new Ottawa studio. Run by Ottawa partner and VP, creative production Jerry Popowich, the Ottawa studio will offer design, preproduction and digital animation capabilities.

Playback readers want the CRTC to loosen up. In response to Playback’s Web poll question ‘What is the best way for the industry to offset public funding cuts?’, 29.3% of respondents called for a loosening of Canadian-content restrictions. 24.3% called for an increase in the domestic content tax credit; 23.9% felt that producers should look more to the international marketplace; while 17.6% suggest producers dig into their own pockets. Only 5% believe that branded content is the best solution.

Montreal: Live-action and green-screen digital cinematography, motion-capture data imposed on virtual actors, key frame and stunning 3D animation sets all combine to create the enhanced production values on Fungus the Bogeyman, a new three-hour family miniseries commissioned by CBC and BBC.

Montreal: Supported in a major way by the public at the Cannes Film Festival, Denys Arcand’s Les Invasions Barbares (The Barbarian Invasions) returned home triumphant with two major awards, the prize for best screenplay (Arcand) as well as best actress for Marie-Josee Croze. The remarkable reception at Cannes, ‘a thrill’ to quote Cinemaginaire producer Denise Robert, turned to near rapture when Miramax Films announced it had acquired U.S. rights.

Montreal: Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm and Film Tonic have concluded a ‘strategic partnership,’ with all Tonic product henceforth to be distributed by Alliance Atlantis in all media.

After eight years as the face and voice of producers, Elizabeth McDonald is moving back from the spotlight. The long-serving president and CEO of the CFTPA will step down in late August.

In What About Tomorrow? a report on Canadian French-language drama prepared for the CRTC and Telefilm Canada, author Guy Fournier writes, ‘As far as the CRTC is concerned, readers will probably not be surprised that the television broadcasters I surveyed regard [the commission] as a necessary evil in general, [and] a genuine nuisance when it comes to television ‘content.”

The Alliance for Children and Television honored Canada’s top English-language children’s programs at a gala Awards of Excellence ceremony held June 2 at the CBC Broadcast Centre’s Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto.

Organizers of the Innoversity Creative Summit 2003 ‘made it’ through the two-day conference held in Toronto May 22-23 with a better-than-expected turnout given the current situation in Toronto and its nagging SARS scare.